Thursday

Woke up at 7:15am, had rice for breakfast, then drove to school. First up today was 4-1 and we tried out using the “puppets” while practicing the plays today. It was a bit messy overall as everyone was forgetting when it was their turn to say their lines, and so on, but we got through 1.5 rounds of practice and the wolves and shopkeepers said their lines great, so it wasn’t a complete failure. We’re definitely running on a tight schedule with practice though, since we only have today and next week’s lesson left before presentation.

Next up was 1-1 and it was a super fun lesson today – we were on colours! Started off with singing the “Hello” song as warm up, and then I introduced the new “Colours” song which has actions in it too so that was a lot of fun to do with the kids, especially since 1-1 loves to dance and aren’t shy about it. Quite a few of them knew colours already, so for a second I thought they’d already covered it! But luckily they haven’t actually. We then did the colour card game where they asked each other “What colour?” and answered with the colour of the card they were given, and the aim was to find other people who had the matching coloured card. The 1st graders always really love this game, or just any game involving cards really. After that we did the prep for bingo, by having them colour in the squares on the bingo sheet. I originally planned to play bingo in the same hour, but we ran out of time too easily. Even though we ran out of time, the lesson still felt pretty long, and I almost forgot we were still only in period 2 (had no idea why but it totally felt like period 4 and lunch was next). Thankfully one of the teachers had brought muffins to share with us all, so that helped to tide me over until lunchtime.

Next up was 1-2 and they were just as good. The kids in 1-2 really like hugs, and there was one kid that was hanging onto my leg like a koala and sliding around haha. They do this to their homeroom teacher all the time as well, it’s really cute! 1-2 isn’t as active as 1-1, but they still did the colour song + actions very well, so I’m happy. I was just talking yesterday with the other assistant teachers about how I would love to be able to see these 1st graders grow up and stay at this school with them until they’re 6th grade. I want to see how far their English will go, and how I could contribute to that growth as their teacher. But I don’t know which school I might end up at in the future, so it’s a bit sad. Next up was 1-3 and they were also super good. They loved the colour song/dance and were super enthusiastic when I asked who wants to do the song again. They also were the class to finish colouring in their bingo squares the fastest. There was also one kid who kept saying the colours in the absolute cutest voice ever, so cute that even the other kids in the class were exclaiming “so cute!”, it was pretty funny.

Lunch with 1-1 again with another huge warm welcome into the class, even though I literally just saw them in period 2 this morning. Lunch today was udon, bread, pickled daikon and carrot, and red bean soup with mochi. They must have had a mochi shortage because I only 2 in my soup, but the kids had like 5! Today the kids were all telling me about their Nintendo games, and who has the Switch and everything. Spent the lunch break inside again cause I was super sleepy and had some stuff to catch up on. Cleaning time was easy again, this week’s kids are super great. One of the girls was telling me how she was studying English outside of school at Kumon, and told me that they read books and stuff in order to learn how to read and write English, which I think is great! They really should implement teaching reading and writing English in schools as well, not just in cram schools/after school classes.

4-2 in period 5 and it was a teeny bit better than 4-1 in period 1 because we learnt we should let them practice a little bit before we run through it as a class. Since they just came back from winter break, they probably all forgot the lines and stuff, which is why 4-1’s practice was very messy. Actually 4-2 was still a little messy, so I think my JTE is a bit worried whether or not they’ll be able to be ready to present in time. All of them still can’t remember their lines (except for a veeery select few) so they’re focused on reading their lines off the sheets, so then they forget to move their puppets, so it’s all just very all over the place and not put together at all at the moment. My JTE suggested we practice in lunchtimes or during the 20 minute morning break to get the kids on track. I feel like they can totally memorise all the lines, they’re all truly capable of doing it, but just lacking the push and discipline. Spent the spare 6th period organising stuff for Monday’s Grade 3 lesson (had to find all the missing picture flash cards for Karuta) and prepping stuff for tomorrow’s 5th grade lesson (they’re going to be drawing parfaits for each other which is going to be cute as). Got off work at 16:15 and drove home.